Fluid flow characteristics of a multi-scale fluidic network

作者：Pistoresi Cyril; Fan Yilin; Aubril Julien; Luo Lingai^*

来源：Chemical Engineering and Processing, 2018, 123: 67-81.

DOI：10.1016/j.cep.2017.10.014

• Flow distribution
• Multi-scale
• Fluidic network
• Parallel channels
• Process intensification

This paper presents an original study on the fluid flow characteristics of a multi-scale fluidic network consisting of a number of elementary ladders. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations were performed to characterize local fluid flow patterns and flow distribution properties in such a complex geometry. In parallel, flow visualizations using fast camera and tracers were carried out in a transparent prototype. A special effort was made to improve the flow distribution uniformity among the 90 parallel mini-channels by inserting the geometrically optimized perforated baffles. The global pressure losses of the multi-scale network with or without baffles were also measured experimentally so as to be compared with the numerical results.
For the multi-scale fluid network, non-uniform flow distribution was observed even under very low flow-rate conditions (e.g., mean Re-ch = 10). For higher flow-rate conditions, significant flow non-uniformity seems inevitable. The insertion of optimized perforated baffles could provide a remarkable improvement on flow distribution uniformity, even under high flow-rate conditions (mean Re-ch up to 2000). Good agreements between numerical and experimental results are observed.

• 出版日期2018-1